


future imperfect

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [99]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/M, angst with no context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25442131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: To their enemies, she’s not a child at all; she’s just a symbol.
Relationships: Mattie Hawkins & Leo Elster
Series: As Prompted [99]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/360089
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	future imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> A little snippet that I think I planned to elaborate on..... but ended up posting as part of the 2019 Humans Challenge without adding anything. 
> 
> Anyway... part of my general “having a baby as a figurehead for civil war is a bad idea” unease.

“This is exactly what I was afraid of,” Mattie whispers.

She has no tears left, no violent, shaking despair. Just a creeping horror that has taken her over, inching up her spine and down all of her limbs until she is frozen with it, a helpless captive to her own dread.

“She’s not a child to them,” she says. “She’s just a symbol. She’s a pawn in their game, it’s… it’s capture the flag.”

Leo slides his hand closer to her, a silent offering. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“I knew this would happen,” Mattie continues. “I knew and I did it anyway. I had her anyway. What kind of mother brings a child into the world to serve a higher plan?”

It would be easier to hear, Leo thinks, if she let herself sound vulnerable, if her voice wavered, if she didn’t sound so very convinced of her own responsibility.

“No kind of mother,” Mattie says, answering her own question. “No mother does that.”

He throws subtlety to the wind and draws her close to him, one arm around her shoulders. They have not been this close in a long time. How is it possible to feel so much like strangers, when they are the only ones who can share this particular heartache?

Leo cycles through a list of possible reassurances, and all of them are empty: either false hope or actual lies. _We’ll find her. Niska will find her. It’s going to be okay_. Nothing is certain. In the world they live in, the world where their daughter is the symbol for a revolution few want and still less believe in, nothing is ever certain.

In the end, all he says, all he _can_ say, is: “It’s not your fault.”

Neither speaks after that. He knows what her silence means. She knows he knows it. This is what they have now, a relic of an old understanding.


End file.
